Gamer Nation by Eric Geissinger

Author:Eric Geissinger
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781633883802
Publisher: Prometheus Books

The coming year will see the Esports Economy grow to $696 million, a year-on-year growth of 41.3%. Brands are expected to spend $517 million, broken down into $155 million on advertising, $266 million on sponsorship, and a further $95 million on media rights. Brand investment will double by 2020, pushing the total market to $1.5 billion. Consumer spending this year on tickets and merchandise will amount to $64 million. Another $116 million is invested by game publishers into the esports industry through partnership deals with white-label organizers.13

While $1.5 billion by 2020 is far below Major League Baseball's 2017 $9 billion market size, these sports are moving in diametrically opposite directions. The audience for esports is one of the most coveted in the advertising world: both young and middle- or upper-middle class. The audience for baseball is famously elderly and averages out to fifty-three years old; for esports in America the average audience member is twenty-eight. While esports’ 41 percent yearly growth from 2016 to 2017 obviously isn't sustainable, it's not a stretch to claim that esports are bound to match and exceed Major League Baseball in the near future: already by 2016, “22% of American male millennials watch esports, putting it virtually equal with baseball and hockey in terms of viewership among that demographic.”14 It's not only going to happen, for some segments of the population it's already happened, and given that the younger generation takes video games even more seriously than their older peers (both playing more and spending more on games) there isn't any reason to think that the esports boom is anywhere near played out.

The majority of Americans don't really have a clear understanding of this subterranean movement in the economy and culture, and for those who do please excuse this brief digression. The rest of us are trying to figure out what's going on and catch up.

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